1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to shipping container contents detection systems, and more particularly to a noninvasive system and method to detect and identify hazardous materials within containers, such as radiation and/or neutron emitting materials, explosives, and special materials such as highly enriched uranium, and further to identify the normally occurring radiological materials within containers. Such a noninvasive container contents detection and verification system operates without having to enter the cavity of a container under examination. The system can include a radiation sensor system that uses integrated sensors for Gamma and neutron detection, and with a spectral analysis capability to identify the specific isotope(s) of materials in containers. Such a system can also include detection and identification of explosives and special materials in containers. These special materials may include highly enriched uranium.
2. Description of Related Art
Current attempts at providing radiation, neutron, explosives, and special materials, detection systems to verify shipping containers, such as those that have been mounted on the gantry crane arms, have resulted in detection systems that have limited sensitivity and efficiency and can not withstand the harsh environment. Radiation detection systems for detecting radiation from shipping containers have not had the ability to identify the specific isotopes. The inability to identify the specific isotopes present in the containers has not allowed these systems to further identify the goods or materials within the containers and therefore has restricted their ability to reliably evaluate the validity of the contents. Moreover, it has not allowed for a use of the manifest for verification of the container contents which has resulted in substantial false alarm rates and has impacted the flow of commerce. Further, these conventional implementations can be difficult to overcome analog noise caused by analog cabling systems. Furthermore, large shock factors of up to 200 G-forces per minute during normal operations handling large containers can cause failure and unreliable operation to key components of conventional radiation detection systems. These characteristics of current shipping container detection systems, such as for use with gantry cranes, detrimentally affect the commercial viability of radiation, neutron, explosives, and special materials, detection systems, cause substantial negative impacts to the flow of commerce, and particularly reduce their effectiveness and reliability in rugged-use environments.
In addition, technologies used to detect explosives can not penetrate metal or include methods that are dangerous to humans such as active x-ray or gamma imaging leaving no effective means to detect or identify explosives hidden in shipping containers.
Therefore a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.